


The Immortals

by Mimic_Teruyo



Series: The Immortals [3]
Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Angst, Diary/Journal, Gen, Goodbyes, Immortality, Introspection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26211889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimic_Teruyo/pseuds/Mimic_Teruyo
Summary: The story of those who moved on, and those they left behind.
Series: The Immortals [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903633
Comments: 20
Kudos: 25





	1. Chasing The White Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

> With eternal thanks to Gravity Saix.

Tewi held her arms to her sides like a child balancing on a fallen tree trunk. She hopped onto the first stone off the shore and looked up at the sinking sun. "How many jumps do you think it'll take to reach the island?"

Mokou eyed the island in the near horizon. When she had last seen it, it had been a peninsula. "About seventy."

Tewi smiled at Mokou. In the orange light of the sunset, the red of her eyes looked darker and richer than it ever did during daytime. She turned and hopped onto the next stone. She balanced on one foot upon it before bounding forward, skipping over the water as though the possibility of falling in had never occurred to her. It probably never had.

Mokou stepped onto the first stone, her hands in her pockets, her eyes gliding across the bay. Rocks dominated the view: large and small, smooth and jagged, fully immersed and bone-dry upon the ground. Had the waves brought them along, or had they been tossed there by some careless oni? Or had they always been there, and Mokou had simply forgotten?

It was likely the latter. There was so much to forget.

She sat down cross-legged on the rock and let the wind blow through her hair. One of the fire-warding charms on her shirt was peeling off, and she hastened to pat it back on. Not that Tewi was likely to mock her fashion choices even if she did burn a hole in her clothes. The rabbit was still wearing a dress from a civilisation a century gone: colourful embroidery on black fabric depicting flowers and birds of prey, the once long sleeves frayed to nothing and leaving her arms as bare as her mud-speckled feet.

"Ten, eleven..." Tewi twirled around to face Mokou, her hands behind her back. "It's more fun if you jump too."

Mokou ignored her and looked down at the water surrounding the rock. She met her reflection, with its ankle-length, spiderweb-brittle hair, and less than immaculately clean face. Eyes carrying endless years stared back up at her.

She tugged at a thread coming loose on her trousers. Her new clothes were already unravelling to rags.

She looked up. Tewi was jumping back towards her, arms once again mimicking wings. "This is even more fun with sharks."

"I bet it is."

Tewi waited. Knowing she wouldn't leave her alone till she played along, Mokou got up and followed her down the bridge of rocks.

Tewi skittered ahead. "What were you thinking about?"

Mokou blinked and slowed down. Truth be told, she hadn't been thinking about anything much. "The usual stuff. What I'm going to eat next. What Kaguya's up to. If it'll be decades or centuries before something new shows up."

"Mm-hm."

"And... the same as always. How long it will take for us to be free."

Tewi halted. She turned back towards Mokou, her head bowed so low Mokou could only catch glimpses of her small face through her reflection.

"Is that what you're always thinking about?" she asked quietly.

Mokou shrugged. "Just sometimes. Can't help it." She thought back at faces she hadn't seen in centuries. "Kaguya does too. Not so sure about Eirin."

Tewi stayed statue still, looking as young and frail as a freshly hatched chick. And yet she was as old as Mokou. Older. And had a way out.

Mokou smiled. She hoped it lacked any residue bitterness. "I guess that's not a concern you share."

Tewi looked up with the biggest grin Mokou had ever seen. "Nope!"

Mokou sighed, then kept smiling. "Probably for the best."

Tewi turned back towards the island and cleared another gap between rocks. "You might want to go see Reisen."

She knew it had been only a matter of time, but still the words felt like a stone had sunk into her chest. She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. "Has she made her choice?"

"You should ask her yourself."

"Yeah. Of course." Mokou plunged her hands into her pockets and fell into reflection. Yes. It was time to go home. She would be kicking herself for a hundred thousand years if she didn't get to say farewell. Or, she'd be doing that at least until Eirin's medicine wiped Reisen's life clean out of her memory.

Tewi kept moving forward. There was a new spring in her step, as though relaying the news had freed her from any shackles holding her back.

Funny. Now that Mokou thought of it, she had never heard of Tewi needing medicinal aid.

"Do you think it's gonna end?"

Tewi's question shook Mokou back to the present. "Is what going to end?"

Tewi said nothing, merely skipped ahead.

"Life?" Mokou sighed. "Eventually. It can't go on without the world. And since the world began somewhere, it's going to have to end one day as well."

Tewi paused. Tewi turned. Tewi smiled.

Without another word, she turned once more and ran ahead, dashing from stone to stone so quickly she might as well have been flying. She raised her arms ahead as though trying to catch the sun the moment before it hit the water.

Perhaps she would.

* * *

> This is really the story of those who left us behind.
> 
> A time came in my life when I realised I was no longer capable of change. In a way, we have all become eternal, like a parody of those who dwell in the Pure Lands. The time of those who could pass away has long since entered its long twilight. The time when I belonged in their number isn't even a memory.
> 
> Those changing creatures, human and youkai alike, those were the real living beings. While my mind can still bear the strain, I'd like to leave behind an account of those I once knew. Something to remind those who come after that such beings once existed.
> 
> Anything I write down will be feeble and distorted. A monument of illusory memories and half-forgotten impressions. It will have to do. There is no-one else left to do it, anyway.
> 
> The Child of Miare once told me it's easier to picture a single person and write with them in mind. I picture you, reader, as one of the dregs of the Lunar Capital, who has finally returned to purify Earth in its entirety. Someone to whom eternal existence is as natural as dying is to the living. Someone just a smidgen more sympathetic towards the impure creatures of Earth than the rest of your kind. Even so, my attempts at describing life as it was will likely seem to you like carefully cataloguing the souls of insects.
> 
> Still. I will try.


	2. Hypnopompia

Sometimes, when lying alone on a patch of grass or gazing at an ocean, Mokou's mind would return to a particular daydream of hers. Not the one about killing Kaguya with a single stab from a fiery lance after a hundred-round duel, or even the one about finding a miracle counter to the Hourai Elixir. This one was about the people of Gensokyo, appearing fully formed and either living on or disappearing into the wind, stretching from the dawn of time to the distant future.

She leaned into the rickety fence separating her from the sea and closed her eyes. Formless, she travelled to a dark plain, covered in fine white sand.

The order in which people emerged had crystallised over the years, whether accurate or not. First there were only Suwako and Tewi — appearing together, as Mokou had never learned which one had come first. Both were small and wore plain clothes, as unassumin as dew. Suwako appeared regal in spite of her slightness, the gaze of her large eyes direct and unwavering. Tewi was less self-assured with her limbs marred in dirt, but mischief gleamed ruby-like from beneath her messy fringe.

Then came the Taoists. Mokou had never met them before Gensokyo, and so she imagined them much s they had looked when she had first run into them, with Miko's ear mufflers and all. Yukari's exact age eluded Mokou, but she emerged alongside the quartet, in a purple kimono and with younger eyes.

Then, those two. They were untold years older than Mokou, of course, but Kaguya and Eirin appeared on the plain only moments before Mokou herself: Kaguya a beautiful child growing into a beautiful adult, Eirin eternally the same. In her imagination, Mokou's hair was snowy cobweb from birth, the human child gone even from memory.

Then, the avalanche. Byakuren and her crew... Yuyuko rose up flower-like next to Yukari, already ghostly. The tengu... the Devas... more and more other youkai... almost as many gods... oh, she had forgotten the enma... and Hieda no Are, impossibly identical to Akyuu in spite of the masculine clothing and bearing, soon gone until Hieda no Aya rose to take the vacant place.

Ran Yakumo followed: her Mokou could imagine as just a regular fox, who soon stood up as her tail split into two... Hieda no Aya was replaced by Hieda no Anana, then Amu... more humans emerged, like mayflies in the face of the rarely changing youkai...

Hieda no Ani... Hieda no Aichi... lesser youkai... small gods... fairies... Reisen, already ages old but only then appearing on Earth... the humans Mokou had met in Gensokyo... Hieda no Akyuu...

There. Stop. Look.

The plain was crowded with a constellation of faces. Smiling, frowning, turning to chat and bicker amongst themselves. A motley of colours and voices: soft, violent, matching and clashing alike.

Mokou looked through this crowd and at herself. Hands in the pockets of trousers that had seen better days. Visibly tired. Silent. Burning, always burning.

Surrounded at all sides by people she knew. Standing next to people she trusted. Nearly leaning into the one she loved the most.

And smiling.

And then they dwindled.

Humans vanished first, crumbling into dust and initially replaced by new generations until Mokou couldn't remember the name of a single living human besides the Child of Miare. Lesser youkai faded out, as did lesser gods.

The vision sped up. Even powerful youkai vanished, preceded by nearly all gods. Fairies didn't die, but one by one, they too were gone. The number of people standing on the plain was reduced to twenty, then ten, with no changes to the ranks of those remaining but the ever disappearing and and re-appearing Child of Miare, brief flickers against the dead, static backdrop.

And gone.

The numbers fell again, slow as gentle snowfall. Nine, eight, seven... the world around them grew quieter and dustier as the white sand billowed and settled again... six, five, as the final flowers died out and Yuuka faded with them... the passage of time was so fast it made Mokou a bit sick... four... three, as Yukari opened one final gap and bowed out of the cosmos...

Usually, this was when Mokou opened her eyes. She didn't want to know what followed.

Today was different. Today, she was more acutely aware than usual that she would have to face it all eventually anyway. She might as well try to comprehend it now.

And so, she squeezed her eyes shut and remained in the swiftly passing wasteland, growing infinite around her, Kaguya, and Eirin...

"Mokou?"

Her eyes slammed back open.

Reisen stood next to her in her bulky medicine peddler's gear, ears flattened by her hat, tilting her head. "Is everything all right?"

"Same as always." Mokou straightened herself and tried to shed the fantasy from her thoughts. Its remnants kept clinging more firmly to her by the day. "Are you heading home?"

"I am. Will you come back with me?"

"Sure." It wasn't as though she had any plans.

They walked wordlessly along the cliffside path, taking in the scents of the sea and the blossoming spring. Down in the valley, from where Reisen had just arrived based on the unmistakable jingle coming from her pockets, stood a cosy village shielded by the bones of ancient metal structures, overgrown with greenery. In her mind, Mokou still called it the Human Village.

She narrowed her eyes at the valley, trying to catch sight of its residents. "Get a lot of sales done?"

Reisen smiled. "Nearly all our stock. It's so much easier now that humans use money again."

Mokou could imagine. Not long ago, Reisen would have returned to Eientei with her arms full of vegetables and rice, the packages piled up to her ears.

"Master Eirin thinks we should begin offering inoculations again, but the people are superstitious. They think it's poison." Reisen's smile gained an oddly satisfied edge. "I don't think they'll ever trust me."

"I mean, you're a youkai. Or maybe it's Eirin they don't trust."

Though her smile remained, Reisen said nothing. She had grown quiet over the past few centuries. It was rare to hear her say a harsh word to anyone, even to Tewi, and even soft words were few and far between.

"Are they happy?"

It took Mokou a moment to realise that she herself had asked the question.

Despite its abruptness, Reisen answered almost at once. "Are humans ever happy?"

They walked on.

After a while, Reisen spoke up again. "I think they are. In their own way, at least."

Mokou nodded and sidestepped to avoid stomping a dandelion on her path.

"You could go and see for yourself. I don't think they would attack you." Reisen kept her eyes ahead of her. "They might even welcome you."

Mokou said nothing for the remainder of the trip to Eientei.

Instead, she reached out and placed her hand over where Reisen's fingers were curled around the strap on her pack. Reisen detached two of her fingers and brought them to meet hers.

* * *

> I should begin by saying that the dissolution of Gensokyo wasn't what any of us had predicted.
> 
> For a long time, we used to joke and make casual bets over what kind of a disaster would finally rip the Great Hakurei Barrier to shreds. Our guesses ranged from a cataclysm so devastating not even the youkai sage could put a stop to it to goofy theories about the land being sunk by an endless torrent of banana peels.
> 
> In truth, it was a gradual shift, like the passage of time from afternoon to twilight, and so subtle I couldn't pinpoint when it began. Only by pausing and looking backwards could one see what had been lost.
> 
> Eventually, the powers that be decided it was time to let go. We watched as Gensokyo merged with the rest of the world, the shift as silent as a sigh in the night.
> 
> In the end, I would say that of the few places I've called home, Gensokyo suited me the best. Even so, I often forget it ever existed. That part of my life is so conclusively at an end that even when it casually crosses my mind, it is as if I'm recalling an unusually vivid dream: striking and terrifying while also comforting the way only dreams can be. Still, the memories are only fragments that scatter further into the darkness the more adamantly I try to catch them.
> 
> It is only when I cross paths with others who witnessed the final dissolution on that hillside that I'm violently reminded of the air I once breathed, the land I once walked and slept on, the faces of those who once lived alongside me. I remember that there was a time in my life when I was that long forgotten version of myself, who knew the person standing before me. I gaze in her eyes and see recognition of the same shared truth, now long gone.
> 
> Perhaps that is appropriate. In the end, that is what Gensokyo was. A collective dream.


	3. Interlude: The Deathless

A red-headed shinigami emerged from the mists, steering a battered boat. Mokou waved at her, and received a cheerful wave in kind.

"Would you like to visit Higan one day?" Eirin asked.

Mokou meant to nod, but shook her head instead. "Better not risk it. Don't want to taint pure lands."

"A mere visit from a Hourai individual isn't enough to corrupt a true Pure Land."

Mokou kept shaking her head regardless, but she couldn't help curling up her lips. When exactly had Eirin begun to refer to her with the same term she used for Kaguya and herself?

It was nice to belong.

Perhaps she could have visited. She could walked amidst the flowers and ghosts waiting for judgement, and chatted up the workers of the Ministry of Right and Wrong. The thought was pleasant. The thought of acting upon it less so.

"It's not our place," she concluded, turning away from the river. "Let's go eat. Kaguya's probably waiting."

Eirin followed her back to the confines of their corrupt principality. The land of immortals.


	4. Pure Blossom

Ghosts had bodies, sometimes as concrete as those of living beings. From the way Yuyuko swayed like a cherry blossom in the wind, Mokou guessed hers weighed little more than air.

Mokou realised she had lost the thread of her tale only when Yuyuko opened her eyes, still languid with daydream. "And what was the forest like?"

"The Great Youkai Forest?" Mokou straightened herself. "It lived up to its name."

Yuyuko's eyes fluttered shut. "How so?"

Mokou breathed in. Yuyuko always wished to hear Mokou's account of places familiar to them both. As it happened, Mokou didn't mind recounting them. "It was teeming with youkai, obviously. In all seriousness, it could have been called the Fairy Forest and it would still have been true."

"Did humans ever visit there?"

"Not if they could avoid it. They said the atmosphere could suffocate you even if you didn't run into any youkai."

"And you?"

Mokou paused. She found herself staring at the invisible border between herself and Yuyuko, as though expecting it to suddenly make itself physically manifest.

"I went there a few times," she eventually continued, picking her words as though expecting to be interrogated over them. "It wasn't as dark as the darkest parts of the Forest of Magic, but there was always a pressure in the air."

Much like there was pressure in the air above her. The clouds looming over her were steely grey and densely packed, building up for a storm. The kind she hadn't seen in a few years.

She wondered how long it would take until the next time she was struck dead by lightning. Third time was the charm and all that.

The storm clouds didn't extend to Hakugyokurou. The skies behind Yuyuko were a pale, almost sickly white, cloudless and sunless alike. Against this backdrop, the ghost seemed even more alive.

Yuyuko nodded. Whether it was in agreement or with sleep, Mokou didn't know. "And the lighter parts of the Forest of Magic? What are they like in springtime?"

_Are._ A transient word. A word Mokou was happy to leave in peace.

She followed Yuyuko's lead and closed her eyes. A green path opened ahead of her.

She meant to stay away from the Pure Lands. Not because she feared she would taint them: she wouldn't have spent two weeks Heaven over a stupid bet with Kaguya if that were the case, admiring the endless fields of flowers and battling celestials offended by her presence. Rather, it was kind of repulsion, a sickness which struck her even before she set foot in the lands of the deathless. Like there was a parasite clinging to her guts which would only ease its grip when she turned and walked away.

And there she was, half a foot away from the Netherworld, telling stories to an ancient ghost.

"When you enter the forest from the east, the trees immediately blocked off all sound." She was there, breathing in the moisture that clung to the recesses of the terrain until it was as heady as wine. "The leaves are still in bud. but already there are flowers everywhere where the light touches. There is only one trail ahead. When you take it, the sound of your footsteps is drowned out by the warning calls of nesting birds."

Yuyuko hummed, her eyes still firmly shut. "How wonderful. I do so wish there were birds here as well."

"They grow quiet again as you keep moving. The path is filled with roots, but as long as you travel carefully, you can always find a safe footing. As you walk deeper into the forest..." Mokou waved her hand in the air in a way she hoped was fanciful. It didn't matter that Yuyuko couldn't see it. The ghost had alarmingly sharp senses and could reconstruct gestures from sound alone. "You come across a clearing with a white house."

"And who lives there?"

"A magician. A puppeteer, really. She isn't home today, so you walk on."

"A pity."

"When the path forks, you head north. There's a meadow to your left that will be overgrown with grass when summer comes, but for now there's nothing there but a blanket of white flowers. You continue on." She paused. "There's a fallen tree blocking the path."

Yuyuko frowned. "A fallen tree?"

"Yeah, well. Not even that forest is perfect."

Yuyuko hummed. "That's fine. It wouldn't be real if it weren't at all damaged."

Mokou meant to go on, but she could no longer hear the birds or feel the rough forest floor through her threadbare shoes. She opened her eyes.

Yuyuko stayed in place, slumped in slumber but still managing to radiate a queer kind of dignity. The only sign that she was awake at all was the smile she wore, sleepy but knowing.

What she knew Mokou could only guess. There was a reason why they only spoke of Mokou's life, and Mokou's world, and the world they had once shared. A reason neither of them cared to put into words.

It didn't matter. They shared a connection. That was all.

In the distance, Yuyuko's most recent gardener approached. Still called Konpaku, Mokou presumed. Perhaps she should have found out.

Instead, she stood up. "I should get going. How about next time I'll tell you about the time I drank with oni in Former Hell?"

Yuyuko's eyes sparkled. "Until next time, my friend."

_Friend._ Yes, Mokou quite liked being called that. It nicely masked the fact that Yuyuko didn't remember her name.

Maybe next time Yuyuko would ask for it, she thought as she slouched across the desert that had once been the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Or maybe next time Mokou would simply re-introduce herself.

Next time.

* * *

> When I went back some centuries later, Hakugyokurou was no longer there. The land still existed, but it was no longer the Netherworld. The area had become a land for the living, even though there were no living people around to populate it.
> 
> My surprise didn't last for long. Ministry reorganisations were rare even then, but not unheard of. The dead had simply gone elsewhere.
> 
> I walked through the land. It had become tainted, which mostly meant I felt comfortable walking across the wild rose bushes which had risen everywhere, even when they tore into me. All thorns, no blossoms. It was winter, after all.
> 
> The bleached corpse of Saigyou Ayakashi stood where it had died. Outlasted. Outclassed. To this day its story remains a mystery to me.
> 
> It was only after I walked around the tree that I noticed a single cherry blossom clinging to one of its thinnest branches. It looked so frail I tried not to breathe in its direction for fear it would wither at once.
> 
> It was the palest blossom I have ever seen. There wasn't even a suggestion of pink. Only a bloodless, translucent white, like the wings of a long since faded butterfly.
> 
> I watched it for a long time.  
  
---


	5. Dead Letters

Mokou pushed the curtain aside and dipped her head to clear the doorway. Why these people made all their entrances child-sized was a mystery she had yet to resolve.

Her host might explain it to her. Assuming she remembered to ask. It didn't matter much in the end.

The only person in the room was a little girl stooped over a miniature writing desk. Upon seeing Mokou, she calmly placed her slate and stylus aside and settled her hands down on her lap. "It's good to see you again, Mokou."

"Likewise."

The features of the hundredth and ninth Child of Miare were wildly different from those of the hundredth and fifth, the most recent incarnation Mokou had met more than in passing. Her short hair and voluminous robes bore no resemblance to Amomoi's long coifs and thin, pale dresses. She didn't look a day over six.

Her smile was the same as ever, however.

Mokou made herself comfortable on the floor, starkly aware of the grime coating her clothes. It hadn't been easy to get this audience. The child's parents hadn't understood a word of any of the languages Mokou had attempted and had nearly driven her away by force. Only word arriving from their daughter had convinced them to let her in. Mokou didn't begrudge them. Obviously they would want to protect their miraculous child from travel-worn strangers who smelled of funeral pyres.

But there she was, in the end. "What's your name this time around?"

The child beamed. "Akyuu. Written with 'urgent' rather than 'request'."

"Back to the classics, huh?"

"My parents believed that the names for the Children of Miare were becoming too long and decided to ignore all but the final number." Akyuu chuckled. "It is actually pronounced quite differently in our tongue, but that is what it truly means."

Mokou's gaze fell next to Akyuu's desk and onto the pile of slates stacked as high as the girl herself. "How's the work coming along?"

"Very well. I should have it done by next summer. Is there anything you would like me to add to your section?"

"Say that I can now beat Kaguya nine times out of ten." Her track record was six out of ten at the best of times, but a little embellishment made for better profiles.

Akyuu picked up the stylus and jotted the comment down. Looking at it more closely, Mokou saw a sharp red light at the base of the stylus, suggesting higher technology than she had seen in at least six hundred years. The more things changed. "Anything else?"

"That's about it. Eientei's ever eternal."

Akyuu's lips curled slightly upwards as she put the stylus down. "Your section is the easiest contemporary one to update. I have barely changed a thing in two thousand years."

Mokou looked at the slates again. It didn't take a detective to tell that Akyuu wrote day in, day out, rushing to complete an update to the chronicle.

She had to hurry. The previous Child of Miare had succumbed to a summer fever on her eighth birthday, shortly before Mokou had had the opportunity to meet her. The incarnation before that had barely lived to nine. Many sections of the most recent edition of the Gensokyo Chronicle were, much like the title itself, relics of the past, meaningless to anyone but the most historically-minded.

Mokou pushed the thought out of her mind. "If you like, I could try coming up with a more dramatic past for myself."

Akyuu's smile gained an edge to it. "I think it's sufficient as it is written."

Mokou couldn't really argue with that. It hadn't been until the eleventh Child of Miare that she had recognised the historian as a fellow immortal, even if her immortality was of an entirely different sort from her own. It had taken until the fourteenth for Mokou to share the truth behind her own existence, the twentieth for the actual, expurgated truth, and the forty-second before she had allowed it all to be chronicled. By that time, all those remaining who had been contemporary to Hieda no Akyuu already knew anyway.

"By the way, Amomoi—" She fell silent as Akyuu chuckled. "Sorry. Akyuu."

"That's all right. You're far from the only one who forgets." Akyuu looked at the slate before her one last time, then raised her chin. "Would you mind going outside with me?"

Mokou listened in the sidelines as Akyuu spoke to her parents, in that lilting, rising tongue that sounded much like the most modern human language Mokou had learned, but which shared none of its vocabulary. It only took a few select sentences for them to relent. The next thing Mokou knew, she found herself back in the open air, standing in the labyrinth of circular platforms she had previously lost herself in.

Akyuu ignored the rusty clouds above and resolutely took the centremost path. Mokou followed.

The heart of Akyuu's city had been carved high into the hillside in the middle of a forest. Sturdy wooden walkways connected the hill to the gigantic trees nearby and the houses built upon their branches. A shock of autumn colours greeted Mokou everywhere she looked. The layout reminded her of both rabbit warren and an ant colony, assuming both rabbits or ants had learned how to build bridges and enjoy living with no roof but leaves.

Only a few residents were around, dressed warmly in spite of the lingering summer heat. Their turquoise earrings jangled as they walked forty feet above ground level without once looking down. Many of them stopped to stare at Akyuu and Mokou, but none approached. Idly, Mokou wondered who they feared more: the dusty wanderer, or the strange scion of whatever the Hieda clan was called around these parts.

They had only just made it past their second tree when Akyuu began to flag. She said nothing, but her steps, short to begin with, grew more uncertain by the minute.

Mokou watched her soldier on for a few moments before stopping in the middle of the walkway — there was plenty of room to go past her if necessary — and crouching down. "Come on. I'll give you a ride."

For all their years of friendship — or perhaps because of them — it took a long moment before Akyuu actually climbed onto her back. Mokou stood up and said nothing, certain that if she had asked if Akyuu wanted to be carried instead of merely offering to do so, her friend would have refused, not wishing to be likened to all the literal children Mokou had borne on her back over the years. Or perhaps she wouldn't have minded. People changed.

"Past your bedtime?" Mokou teased as she slowed down to take in the scent of a lilac bush growing straight out of the tree. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't a lilac as she remembered them. But it was close enough.

"Not quite yet." Akyuu leaned her head against Mokou's neck. "Each day, I manage to stay up a little longer. Things are already so much smoother than they were a year ago."

Mokou mulled this over as she kept moving. Was having to learn to speak and walk and write all over again a simple task, or an endless source of vexation? Was Akyuu's reincarnation like Mokou's own deaths, something one eventually grew used to? Or was it the opposite, like trying and failing to get used to the deaths of everyone else?

She knew they had already discussed their similarities and differences in depth back when the floors of the Hieda Mansion had been made of bamboo, and again when they had been a mosaic of imported stones. It was simply the content of those conversations which eluded her.

Near the outskirts of the town, underneath the leaves of a maple tree at least two hundred years old, there was an age-blanched bench with a view of the fields ahead and below. Mokou slid Akyuu off her back and placed her gently down. Akyuu's eyes flickered open and shut, but they focused when Mokou sat down next to her. For some moments, they admired the view in the not-quite-silence of droning insects and people living their lives nearby.

"I have only ever been outside in a carriage before." Akyuu kept her eyes ahead as she spoke, peering at the crimson plains just barely visible beyond the fields.

"Huh." Mokou assumed she meant the veiled chairs she had spied on the ground near the city entrance. She hadn't seen any during their walk. Either they didn't travel in the treetops, or they were only used when necessary. To carry invalids, perhaps. Or children of dubious health.

She didn't bother saying anything else. After a hundred reincarnations and literal decades spent in each other's company, Akyuu already knew everything Mokou could possibly say.

The ensuing silence was mostly comfortable and remarkably long. It was so long, in fact, that if Akyuu's eyes hadn't been open, Mokou would have been convinced she had fallen asleep.

She began drifting off herself. The air was cool, but not so cold it made her shiver, and the location seemed safe enough. The journey to the forest city had been a gruelling one, and after days spent on the road, anywhere that wasn't directly on the edge of a precipice felt like a great place to sleep.

A single leaf, yellow and red and a tiny hint of green, was wrenched from the maple by the wind. It landed on the platform alongside dozens of its brethren.

"The next time I die, I will relinquish my right to reincarnation."

Mokou snapped to attention. She knew she had heard correctly even before she saw Akyuu's expression and her distant eyes still staring into the horizon. It did nothing to melt the ice filling her guts.

Akyuu turned, drawing her feet onto the bench as she did so. "I have been self-conceited for too long. I thought that because of my special circumstances and my wealth of experience, I would always be able to continue with my work and have it be meaningful. If anything, I believed my growing wealth of experience would make each new update to the chronicle more profound than the last. I believed all this even as the world moved on without me."

Mokou said nothing.

"The truth of the matter is simple," Akyuu continued. "I have become a thing of the past. I still mostly understand those around me, but I no longer feel what they feel. The threads I am still clinging to are unravelling, and there are few of them left to begin with. This world will soon be something I will never again understand. Thus, I am no longer fit to chronicle it."

"I haven't noticed anything wrong with your recent writings." Granted, it had been four hundred years since Mokou had read any of them, but what was four centuries in the grand scheme of things?

Even as she smiled, Akyuu shook her head. "Perhaps it wasn't yet noticeable in them. But now the world changes faster than I can chronicle it. It takes me two lifetimes to gather knowledge and write it down instead of one. You see what the problem is." Her smile widened, wry in the face of everything. "The longer I go on, the more obsolete I become."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not something anyone has to apologise over. It is simply my time to go. Only, it's..." Akyuu paused and stared down at the hands on her lap. "Difficult to let go, sometimes."

"I'm sure you can stay if you want to." Akyuu reincarnated specifically for the chronicle, Mokou knew, but surely there had to be a way. A reward for ceaseless service, perhaps? The Ministry was supposed to commend that.

Akyuu shook her head again. "It's time. It's..." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "It may be a feature of the reincarnation process. If the enma have spoken of it, I have naturally forgotten. But for the past fifteen hundred years, I have begun to feel..." she hesitated. "Some strain."

"Strain?"

"It's the best word I have to explain it." Akyuu placed her fingertips on her temples. "It's not pain, not exactly. Rather a discomfort, but one that makes my body feel like a prison. It is as if my skull is collapsing in on itself and dragging my spine askew until everything within me is in the wrong place. It makes me wish I could tear off my flesh so I could set it all right again." She took a deep breath. "Sleep alleviates it, sometimes, but it never quite goes away. And it grows worse the more I reminisce."

When Mokou next spoke, she heard the words as if something spoken by a stranger. "Maybe there's only so much a human mind can take."

Akyuu nodded. "Precisely. Perhaps it would be easier if I could simply forget some of my less eventful lifetimes. But I cannot forget. I can never forget."

Mokou could forget. She forgot most things she saw. And still... "I know what you mean."

Akyuu stiffened, as though she had been descending to deep thought and now had to halt and return to the surface. Only then did she look up at Mokou's face. "You feel it as well?"

"Yeah. Not..." She paused to consider. "Not as vividly as you put it. But it's there."

The look Akyuu gave Mokou was both ancient and very, very tired. It conveyed such immense pity that Mokou nearly choked on it.

And then, after a mayfly's lifetime, it was gone. Akyuu averted her gaze. When she next looked up, it was with a smile far more befitting her physical appearance.

"You must be starving, travelling all the way here," she said. "I will ask my parents to fix you some food and a bath. They will be happy to do so."

Mokou had long since learned never to turn down free food, let alone a soak. "Thanks, Akyuu."

Perhaps it was remembering her name that made Akyuu laugh. The sound rang like a freshly minted bell across the treetops.

* * *

"Me? A historian?"

Akyuu nodded and drank from her cup before speaking. "I don't see why not. You could write a chronicle of your own, perhaps."

It had been hours since they had returned from the treetops. They sat in Akyuu's garden beneath black leaves and a starless sky, lit up by a translucent obelisk-shaped lamp affixed straight onto the bedrock. Its glow reminded Mokou of fireflies.

She wrapped the blanket Akyuu had lent her tightly around herself as she tried to think of a reply. "Where would I even start?"

Akyuu let out a tiny yawn and rubbed her eyes. No matter how brilliant her mind, it was still prey to the limitations of her body, and it was hours past her regular bedtime. "Wherever you want to start. That is how all writers do it."

"I'll think about it," Mokou said carelessly. She meant it as a "no", and assumed that Akyuu would immediately interpret it as such.

Instead, Akyuu kept watching her. The ancient soul staring through a child's eyes might have been comical under other circumstances, but there and then, on that crisp autumn night, shrouded in a white blanket with only the pale glow of a single lamp to illuminate her, Akyuu appeared regal. Not even that. Divine.

Not for the first time, Mokou wondered how exactly Akyuu had managed to accumulate so much wisdom than with far fewer years on Earth.

"Write it." When Akyuu smiled, it was a smile from a world long gone. "Who else is going to tell your story if not you?"


	6. Interlude: Toxicology

> It's possible Akyuu wasn't the last Child of Miare. I spoke no extant human languages, and Yukari, the most likely person to inform me of the Living Memory's reincarnation, was too busy exploring the borders of the universe to show up for fifteen hundred years after my meeting with Akyuu. She might have come back.
> 
> But really, I'm done kidding myself. It gets tiresome after a while.

* * *

Mokou stared at the objects in Eirin's outstretched hands as if they were weapons. By a broad definition, they were.

"What does that one do?" she asked, nudging her head to the right.

Eirin raised the pill in her left hand. It was a translucent blue, like a marble shaped out of water. "This will eliminate all memories that are a significant strain to you, whether due to size or emotional weight. It will leave those parts of your brain that have to do with skills unaffected. It is very potent, and will buy you at least twenty-five hundred thousand years of continued sanity."

"And the other one?"

Eirin closed her fist around the blue medicine and brought the other pill to the forefront. This one was shimmering silver. "This one removes the most trivial memories you haven't been able to forget naturally. Nothing that you consider to be of value will be touched. Due to this, it will only stave off the rot for fifty thousand years at most."

Mokou placed her hands in her pockets and looked to the east. They were by a sea, with gentle waves lapping dark water onto the rocky shores. All was silent; even the noisy descendants of gulls appeared to be elsewhere for the day.

Mokou kept staring at the horizon as she spoke. "Either way, won't I notice the gaps in my memory?"

"Only in the most abstract sense. You will not miss what you have lost."

"And which one would you pick?"

"You already know that."

Walking away was an option, Mokou reminded herself. It meant making another choice, one between controlled memory loss and full-blown dementia.

Of course, Eirin might still bother to save her if she succumbed to the latter. Might.

She extended her hand. "Give me the silver one."

"Are you sure?"

"I can always take the other one later if it doesn't work out."

The pill had a harsh, metallic taste, which lingered even after she washed it down with tea. Quicksilver. Only this time, it wasn't her who would wind up dead.


	7. Sacrifices

"Can you rise?"

The metal-tipped boot nudging at Mokou's shoulder wasn't entirely gentle, but the brightness of the voice suggested its owner's didn't mean her harm. Therefore, Mokou ceased playing dead and looked up. The eyes that met hers pierced her straight into the soul.

Eiki smiled and extended her hand. "Come with me."

Mokou accepted the help. After a few newborn fawn steps — it had been some days since she had eaten — she felt steady enough to follow Eiki across the meadow and towards the nearby hill.

"The cape suits you," she said once she found her voice, raspy with thirst.

"Hmm?" After a moment of hesitation, Eiki brushed at the hem of her new uniform, sleek and plain and the colour of twilight. "Thank you. It's a recent change in the uniform policy."

Mokou nodded. That was about all the catching up they needed to do after one hundred and twenty years apart. No, seventy: there had been that entire incident with the seabound city state. Nevertheless.

She kept walking. No point asking why she had been conscripted. She'd find out soon enough, and though she and Eiki didn't always see eye to eye, the enma had never given her a reason not to trust her.

Still, she hesitated when she saw where their path was leading. "They've killed me before." It had been a long time ago, but even so.

Eiki's habitual smile narrowed into sombreness. "The morals of those who live in this settlement have strayed far from what is just. However, they will not touch a single hair from your head while you are in my company."

"Good. I like my hair." Even if they did, what did it matter? It all came back each time she died.

"Besides." Eiki's smile returned. To Mokou's great surprise, she thought she recognised a hint of deviousness. "I have reason to believe their disposition towards you has changed. What do you know about this village?"

"Not much. It's just another small tribe of humans, I suppose."

Eiki slowed her gait. While her smile stayed the same, her eyes changed.

"To us, it's a small community of humans, with no significant history nor notable residents. But to the people living in the village, it's a complete world. Your perception is as white as theirs, but you must not dismiss them simply because of their limited understanding of the world. Their deeds are as black and white as those of any other living creature." Eiki halted completely, with a crack in her smile. "There have been many who thought their beliefs and deeds were more pure and righteous than those of others with no true basis to their assumption. Such thinking leads to complacency and a desire to always be proven right, and further breeds resentment in those hurt by their unjust dismissal." She shook her head and began walking again, her smile re-emerging like the sun from behind a cloud. "Concerning yourself with the righteousness of your own actions before judging those of others. This is the good deed you can do right now." 

Mokou sighed and followed. It had been presumptuous to assume she might make it through the day without at least one lecture. At least this one had been brief, and so she swallowed the counterargument which would inevitably have led to an hour-long discussion at the best of times. They had all the time in the world to get back to it later.

A dead tree marked the entrance to human lands. They only managed a dozen steps further before being accosted by two spear-wielding warriors. 

The younger of the pair, a man with a haphazard beard, pointed his weapon at them, then hesitated. He stared first at Mokou, then at Eiki.

Eiki raised her hand and spoke a few words in a language Mokou didn't know. The warrior responded in kind, then stepped aside, the spear withdrawn. Mokou felt four eyes on her back as they continued onwards.

Soon after, they reached the stake perimeter which surrounded the village proper. Eiki led her through the gate without a single sign of hesitation.

Immediately, there was a stir. The village children, clad in simple rough-hewn tunics and playing in the dirt out in the open, scattered. The few adults standing by the buildings pulled themselves into shadows.

Mokou looked around as they kept walking towards what she assumed was some kind of a market square. The buildings were an eclectic mix, made of wood and stone with patches of colourful glass and metal left behind by those who had lived on the same land long ago. Woven tapestries hung underneath small canopies made out of repurposed foam grids; thatch and long-grown grass mingled with aerographene and transparent alloys. Overall, Mokou found it an interesting crosscut of history.

It didn't matter whether the villagers saw Mokou or Eiki first; they dispersed, hurrying inside their mosaic houses and scurrying towards the opposite edge of the village. Mokou grinned with her teeth showing. Being fled from was better than being shot full of arrows, at least.

They came to the heart of the village, marked by what eerily resembled an ancient relay tower. In fact, when Mokou squinted, she could still see the grips that had secured Immer-Screens in place thousands of years ago. She assumed the flowering vine encircling the tower was somewhat more recent.

It was by this tower that Eiki paused, lowering her arms and clearly preparing herself for a long wait. Mokou shrugged and leaned against the tower, mindful of the blossoms.

Then they came. A handful of humans approached, their eyes bright and their expressions earnest. They gathered around Eiki with an almost reverent air, though many shot awed looks in Mokou's direction as well. The few honest ones, Mokou supposed, or else the foolish. Perhaps they were the same thing.

She looked on and quickly deduced the rules of the game when one of the humans stepped in front of Eiki and the enma began a sermon in the people's rough, low-pitched language as though she had been born speaking it. She idly wondered if Eiki had actually had to learn the language from scratch, or if instant language mastery was a perk of being an enma.

As the unfamiliar syllables washed over her, wave after wave after wave, her eyes wandered over her surroundings. Odds were good that soon enough this society would either rise or get trampled by another, and she couldn't begin to guess which. Would they invent new things, build shining cities, live longer and more prosperously with each generation before a collapse? Would it happen slowly like the passage of autumn, or quickly like an avalanche? And would another tiny village like this one soon rise from the ruins, phoenix-like right down to the flames?

Her musings were interrupted by the sound of giggling and nervous whispers. When she looked up, she saw three maidens in sky-blue mantles approach her with their heads bowed low, arms laden with fruit and wild flowers. As one, they laid their burdens at her feet and bowed deeply, clasping their hands. 

Baffled, Mokou turned towards Eiki. The enma paused her lecture just long enough for a quick smile and an aside comment. "They're offerings."

Mokou looked again at the bounty at her feet and then at the women in prayer. For the first time in centuries, she blushed.

* * *

> A goddess.
> 
> That's what they thought I was, anyway. Eiki explained to me afterwards that they had spoken to her of a fiery goddess who wandered the plains and never died. They addressed me in their prayers for mild winters and painless births, and now wished to pay me more direct tribute.
> 
> When I protested that I couldn't actually help them with any of these things, she grew serious. _With enough faith, anyone can become a god._
> 
> Did I truly become one? Who knows. If I ever did, I may have slipped back out of it.
> 
> It's not so strange, really. The distance between a god and youkai was never more than a hair's breadth, and, truthfully, the distance between god and human isn't often much longer. The distance between a god and whatever it is that I have become? I can't answer that question.
> 
> If nothing else, I do believe in what she said. I don't know how it is in the Lunarian Capital, reader, but it's in the nature of living creatures to seek out divinity, and when it can't be found, to create it themselves.
> 
> I hope someone answered their prayers, at least.


	8. Dukkha

Mokou woke up to the sound of drums. She clambered up from the straw mattress and de-wrinkled her robes, then still yawning groped for her overcoat.

The approaching winter ensured it was still dark outside whenever she woke. She made her way to the corridor and waved at Ichirin and Unzan as she passed by their room. Ichirin was too busy playing the drums to wave back, but both she and Unzan nodded in acknowledgement. Mokou didn't really know what to make of their recent enthusiasm for percussions, but at least they made for a better alarm bell than the actual bell had been.

She walked into the main hall. Byakuren was already there, sitting so perfectly still she might as well have been there the whole night.

Mokou sat down close to her. The drum concerto soon came to an end, and Ichirin and Unzan re-emerged, Unzan squeezing himself through the doorway to hover in the hall.

The morning chant began. Mokou did her best to forget about everything else.

After the chant and meditation were done, she headed to the kitchen to prepare their breakfast. Dandelions again. That was fine. They made for decent tea as well as salad, and this self-imposed deprivation was nothing compared to her past suffering in the wilderness.

They ate in silence. There were no news, after all. No word from Shou. Mokou was beginning to doubt she would ever return. She had been a venerable youkai, after all, and while still in excellent health, her essence had been stretched and dwindled to gossamer. She had insisted she was more than well enough to spread the teachings to the new continent, but...

So, it was just the four of them now. The rest of Byakuren's ancient followers had vanished long before Mokou joined the order, dead or simply gone, simply disappeared into thin air one night like Nazrin had. It was just as well. They didn't have any visitors, anyway.

After breakfast was done, Mokou returned to one of the smaller chambers and sat down to meditate. Learning to contemplate her physical existence had been excruciatingly difficult: she had realised only afterwards how readily she had divorced herself from both body and mind during her previous lifetimes, slipping into acting on mere instinct whenever her sanity failed her.

This was different, though. This was to find peace on earth. Which was something she wasn't supposed to desire if she were to achieve it.

Mokou frowned and opened her eyes. Something was nagging at her. Something that she had been trying to forget during her century and a half in this house of stillness.

She could no longer relax, and when the bell rang to announce lunch, she got up hurriedly, relieved to at least see other people.

"No visitors, Ichirin?" Byakuren asked as Mokou dug into the dandelion soup.

"None."

Byakuren nodded. The lack of people to instruct appeared to bother her even less than it bothered Mokou. Not for the first time, Mokou wondered how long her teacher would remain on earth if there were no new pupils.

She finished her soup in silence, then waited for the others to finish so that she could wash the dishes. The dishes done, she headed outside. It was her turn to sweep the courtyard, and she took her frustrations out on the dead leaves infesting the cracked stone path.

"I would like to speak with you, Mokou."

She turned. Byakuren's tone had been poised, but her face, usually smooth and without a single wrinkle belying her immense age, was creased into a slight frown.

"Sure thing. Mind if I keep sweeping?"

"By all means, go ahead."

Mokou turned her back towards Byakuren and returned to extricating a particularly stubborn leaf from between the stones.

"To begin with, I must clarify that you are welcome to stay here indefinitely. You have taken our creed with the utmost seriousness, and I am by no means turning you away. You have done nothing wrong."

Mokou stopped sweeping and turned back with a wan smile. "I think I see where this is going."

Byakuren nodded, just once.

Mokou left the stuck leaf where it was and swept the loose ones into a pile. "I'm not completely blind yet. No matter how hard I try to become aware of the world, something holds me back. It only gets worse the harder I try." She shoved the broom at an errant leaf. "I doubt I'll ever achieve satori."

Byakuren nodded again. "I will not say that it's impossible, nor that you should stray from the path, but..."

Mokou leaned into the broom and stared at the sky. As usual, the sun was shrouded behind a red fog, looming high above the shrivelled spruces with their orange needles.

"We don't belong in this world," she said.

Byakuren gave her a small smile. "Perhaps you have already reached an enlightenment of your own."

Mokou said nothing.

"You are more than welcome to stay."

Without excess hurry, Mokou kept at sweeping. "That means a lot."

She kept eyeing Byakuren. Over time, she had met countless people with one foot already out of this world. Byakuren had a thousand years left, give or take a few centuries, but she already belonged. So much so that when she stepped into the light, she was all but translucent.

Mokou's thoughts drifted elsewhere. For the first time in centuries, she willingly thought of Kaguya. How long had it been? Three thousand years? Four thousand? Even in the face of an eternity spent together, the previous betrayal had seemed a rift that could never be mended. She had sworn, hadn't she? This time, it really had been unforgivable.

Ha.

She shook her head. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she struggled, at the end of the world nothing remained but the company of her fellow lepers. She was as cursed with them as they were with her.

Not that she meant to go back just yet. But it was then, as she finished sweeping and looked back at the mountainside temple, her fleeting respite in the endless sea of time, that she accepted that one day, she would have to face Kaguya again.

"I might return one day."

"The gate is always open to you."

They spoke no more as they retired to the front door and sat onto the step, staring at the sun until it set into the dusty horizon. Nor did they say anything as Mokou stood up and walked into the black night.

* * *

> The next time I visited the mountainside, not a stone remained of the temple. Had there been some ruins, I could have guessed what had happened, but with the entire thing gone, and with none of the locals understanding my sign language, I'm left to wonder if instead of abandoning the building, Byakuren and the others took it with them as they moved to free the people of another land from eternal suffering.
> 
> I sat where I had slept for fifteen decades and closed my eyes, fixing my entire attention on the thirty-one parts of me as Byakuren had taught me.
> 
> It was dark when I next opened my eyes, and I was no more enlightened. But then, maybe knowing I never would be was an enlightenment of its own.
> 
> In any case, I hope those saints found their freedom.


	9. Illusion

The bamboo which had been mere saplings when Mokou had gone to sleep had grown into a thicket by the time she awoke in the morning.

She pushed the stalks aside with practised ease. You never forgot what it was like to live in a bamboo forest. Much like she would never forget her first time sleeping by the plant: she had chosen her spot poorly and had awoken in the evening to find herself skewered on a stalk. She had lived to extricate herself, but not for long after.

Now, however, her body was without extraneous holes, and so she grabbed her belongings and set off towards open ground. There was no path across the meadow between the forest and the village, and so she stepped wherever she found the best footing, avoiding the flowers where she could. 

Halfway across, she felt her legs give way. She collapsed backwards onto the grass.

She stared up at the sluggish clouds and the startling azure behind them. When had she last eaten? A week ago, perhaps? No wonder. Better gather her strength for a moment longer and enjoy the soothing wind and the smell of summer.

As she breathed in and out, wondering whether her legs would last her till the village or if it would be more prudent to scrounge up some wild plants, a pair of gossamer wings emerged in her sphere of vision. They were followed by their owner, a fairy with insect-like black eyes and bark for skin.

Mokou smiled at it. "Hello, little one. Never seen one quite like you,

The fairy flew closer to her, wriggling its tail-like appendages and antennae in the air. It chittered something indecipherable, Mokou kept smiling.

A moment later, the fairy got bored of her and began flying away.

And turned into a smouldering pile of ash before Mokou's eyes. 

As Mokou stared at the ashes being swept away by the wind, quite certain she hadn't invoked her powers and that she had just witnessed a case of spontaneous combustion, a smooth, familiar voice spoke just by her ear: "Creatures like that have no place here."

"Why not?" Mokou tilted her head to see Yukari, who had now fully emerged from a gap and shielded them both with her parasol. "What was wrong with it?"

"She didn't belong to Gensokyo." And that was all Yukari was ever going to say on the subject. Mokou felt the most uncanny of déjà vus.

Yukari opened another wound in reality. She plunged her hand in. It returned with a bowl of rice.

"I would like take a stroll with you today," she said as she handed Mokou the bowl, followed by chopsticks and a plate of small fish.

Mokou discovered to her dismay that she could no longer recognise the fish. That didn't prevent her from sitting up and digging in. It had been so long since her last mouthful that her body was actively rejecting what it needed, but that was something she had learned to counteract millennia ago: she chewed slowly, even when her stomach lurched in protest, ignoring the taste and smell and texture whenever it offended and focused instead on the scenery.

Another fairy sprung up from grass, its white dress flowing, the sunflower it carried in full bloom. Yukari smiled drowsily at it.

Mokou polished off the last of the rice. She could easily have gone for more now that her body finally understood that what she was shovelling in was not poison and was in fact rather delicious. But it was enough. "Thanks."

Yukari smiled and spirited the plates away. Mokou momentarily amused herself by imagining a ring of bowls and cutlery circling the Earth's orbit. 

Yukari offered Mokou her arm. Mokou leaned on it just long enough to stand up.

They travelled in silence, Mokou with her hands in her pockets, Yukari gliding elegantly across the grass. Already from a distance, Mokou could see the villagers milling about, opening their shops and setting up signs, sweeping their porches and chatting with their neighbours.

She and Yukari didn't attract the least bit of attention as they walked through the gates. As voluminous as Yukari's wide skirts were, somehow they were always a hair's breath away from ever coming to direct contact with anything in the village. Mokou followed behind her, taking in the sounds and smells of life. The owner of the noodle stall already opened for the morning, and despite her full stomach, she found her nose inevitably leading her towards it.

Shaking her head, she followed Yukari through the village. She had no money, and though in the past, she had often exchanged goods for her labour or by acting as a guide, well... circumstances were different now. There would always be another time for fresh noodles.

The dragon statue stood where it always did. its eyes were clouded over, as they had been every time Mokou had seen it during the past year. 

She turned towards Yukari. "Do you have anywhere in particular you want to go to? Or are we just ambling about?"

"Whichever you prefer. There is no rush."

That was definitely keeping with the spirit of Gensokyo. It had always been roughly eleven months of peaceful, unchanging relaxation to each month of high-energy incidents. Furthermore, few of those incidents had concerned Mokou, and so her memories of the land was mostly about wandering the woods, taking one day at a time, and...

Yukari tilted her head, catching Mokou's attention. "Shall we move on?" 

"Sure." The samey buildings merged into one another as Mokou walked by. How many small wooden shops had she seen over the years? How many stars were there in the firmament?

Even so, she could recognise the exact shade of blue in the striped curtains by the florist's shop, and the pair of children playing with a temari before it. She recognised the slight imperfections in the grain of the shop's walls, and the signs of wear on its surface. Yukari had gone to such meticulous detail in her recreation of Gensokyo that Mokou wasn't sure even Eirin, for all her superior intellect and nigh infinite knowledge, could have done better.

She stepped to the shop and touched the wall, sliding her fingers against the grain. Her finger snagged into a splinter.

Yukari smiled at her as she sucked out the offending bit of wood and spat it on the ground. "Did you expect the wall to give way?"

"No." She had already touched plenty of surfaces during her stay. None had been false. "Sometimes it's just good to remind yourself that it won't."

Yukari's smile vanished. As Mokou turned to find the cause for this sudden change, she nearly bumped into it.

Reimu Hakurei's rich brown eyes swept across Mokou with only a flicker of attention. She walked forward, in a slow but not particularly lackadaisical pace, her head held up, her expression level and inscrutable, seemingly oblivious to all the villagers staring at her and hurrying out of her way.

Even in a world of immaculately preserved details, Reimu's simulacrum appeared sculpted with exceptional care. Every line on her face, every slight imperfection of her skin, every bent strand of hair had been placed with a hand concerned at creating an exact replica. Mokou could no longer remember the Hakurei shrine maiden with enough detail to compare this spectre to her memory — in the interceding years, she had forgotten even the colour of her hair — but she had no doubt this Reimu was an exact snapshot of the original Reimu from a single moment in time, right down to the very last pore and cell.

Not a single muscle moved on Yukari's face as Reimu passed them by. It didn't matter. Mokou had seen enough. 

She turned and left, confident Yukari would follow after her when it suited her.

* * *

  
  
"It's time for me to return to the real world."

"So soon?"

Mokou picked at a paper ribbon coming loose from her hair. Now that her stomach was full, she could fully appreciate the beauty of her surroundings: the whispers of the wind in the grass, the kaleidoscope of flowers, the slow procession of spotless white clouds marching across the skies. The air was a delight to breathe; the waters were bright, as clear as dew and home to beautiful water lilies and jewel-like dragonflies. She could fall asleep right where she lay now with no fear of suffocating on pollution, no fear of acid rains eating away her skin or toxic insects burrowing into her flesh and laying eggs into her innards and leaving her begging for death.

Truly, Gensokyo had been paradise.

"It's been a couple of centuries since I tore Kaguya's head off," she said. "She gets even smugger than usual if I don't beat it out of her. Trust me, you don't want to meet her when she's given time to get smug."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Yukari was nowhere to be seen, but Mokou knew she was close by. She always was. "I can take you directly to her and bring you back once you're done letting off steam."

"I'd rather spend some time on the outside anyway. I don't want to lose my touch."

"I see."

Much like the youkai of the original Gensokyo had become softer, more comprehensible, more human in every way, Yukari too had changed, but in the opposite direction: she still wore the skin of who she had once been, but whatever lurked beneath it was anyone's guess. If there had ever been anyone who had crossed one border too many, well...

Mokou smiled. Who was she to judge?

"I'll come back later," she said. "I like the peacefulness here."

"It's a good place to rest." If Mokou hadn't known better, she would have called Yukari's tone wistful.

Mokou closed her eyes and leaned backwards. The back of her head met with Yukari's lap and stayed there until she drifted off, unsure what kind of a hell she would awaken in next, but certain it would be no worse than what she had left behind.

* * *

> Maybe the truth is obvious to whoever's reading this, but for all the time I spent with her, I never did figure out just what Yukari was. She was inscrutable like someone who had long since crossed the border between youkai and goddess, and then the border between goddess and whatever lies beyond, but then she would turn around and act so _human_ in ways I had long since forgotten how.
> 
> I have to assume that for all her stupendous powers, she had once, long ago, started off as a human. Not that it matters. Any traces of humanity that clung to her eroded over the years, ground away like all earthly things not tainted by the Hourai Elixir. 
> 
> Whatever she was and whatever she became, I didn't see her again. She may have died. She may have decided to remain in her Gensokyo for rest of eternity. If I had to make a real guess, however, I would she reached the borders of reality and crossed to worlds past my comprehension. If so, I wish her all the best.
> 
> It's only sometimes that I wonder what I would have done if she had asked me to join her on her journey. I still don't have a conclusive answer.
> 
> But then, it has long since ceased to matter. 


	10. The Medicine Peddler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As this is very likely the final thing I post this year, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful end of the year. I hope we meet again in 2021 under more auspicious stars.
> 
> Until then, here's one more parting.

The silken line gleamed in the rising sun. Mokou held it aloft and smiled. Over time, Kaguya had become a master at the loom: the thread was as sturdy and transparent as any fisherman could hope for.

She cast her line into the muddy waters, then sat down amidst the reeds to wait. Definitely not to think: she tried to empty her mind of all thoughts. They were all banal, inane fragments that had already crossed her mind a thousand times. She was unlikely to piece together the inner workings of the universe in the middle of a swampy flood plain.

The sun made its way high to the sky, caressing Mokou with its rays like an old friend. Eventually, she sighed and got up. She stretched her idleness-sore limbs. No fish in these waters, she supposed. Then again, a ball of mud didn't exactly make for an enticing bait.

Speaking of mud... not far from her, the swampy earth bubbled with audible pops. Mokou turned her fishing pole around and used it to poke at the bubbles. A frog? A youkai? Or possibly just a buried current.

"Mokou?"

Mokou heard Reisen before she saw her. She crashed into the reeds as though intending to raze them, the pack strapped to her back throwing her off-balance time and time again before she finally made it to Mokou.

Mokou removed the hook from her fishing pole and extracted the ball of mud from it. "Were you looking for—"

The ball of mud fell from her hand.

"You're bleeding."

Reisen blinked and raised her hand to her nose. Her fingers came back streaked with purplish red. "It's nothing. It's a side effect of the deoxidising drugs, that's all."

"Not that." Mokou shoved the hook into her pocket and put the pole down. She crouched down and took hold of Reisen's ankle.

The arrow embedded in Reisen's calf hadn't gone entirely through the limb, but it was nevertheless firmly stuck. Thin trails of blood snaked down her leg and gathered at the sole of her shoe.

Reisen shuddered and closed her eyes as Mokou poked the stem of the arrow. "Oh."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's fine. I barely felt it."

Mokou looked around. "Can you sit down on that rock?"

Reisen followed Mokou's instructions without protest. She took off her pack and rummaged through it. "I should have some procoagulant gel and bandages left."

She didn't so much as hiss when Mokou pulled the arrow loose. The arrowhead was unusually large and fashioned from flint. Mokou tossed it aside without a second thought and saw to the wound.

"It's not much," she said as she secured the bandage around the calf, "but it should serve until we get back to Eientei."

"Thank you." Reisen looked away. "You didn't have to do that."

"No-one has to do anything much these days."

"I mean that it was unnecessary. A waste of resources." She let out a helpless little laugh. "Do you think I'm going to die of gangrene?"

"If I did, I would have asked for disinfectant."

Reisen said nothing more and allowed Mokou to help her stand back up. Mokou wasn't too surprised. After all, they both knew there was very little purpose left to the world but performing small acts of kindness.

"Why did you go there?" Mokou asked as Reisen shrugged her pack back on.

The nearest human tribe was superstitious beyond belief, and any attempt Mokou had made to contact them had been met at best with open hostility and at worst with a flurry of arrows. She had died to them twice already, most recently when she accidentally wandered too close to their village and taken a nap in the wrong spot.

They began to walk up the gentle slope. Eientei was a mere five miles away. They'd be there before sunfall.

"I thought they might be willing to trade. That's all."

Mokou decided to change the subject. "So, Eirin can't make a drug to keep you whole that doesn't drench you in blood?"

"She could back when she had the ingredients. We lost a lot of our stock in a firestorm last century." Reisen sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose. "This is nothing, really. I have dealt with far worse side effects."

_Mokou's dosage was ten times the original one. It made her stomach lining act up._

_It was still better than the previous drug which had eaten right through it._

_"I warned you not to take it all at once." Eirin sighed as she handed Mokou the medicine. "I have refined the recipe, but you must take it at two hour intervals."_

_Mokou took the packet and nodded. It was a sizeable batch. The medicine would never run out, not as long as Kaguya could keep stretching the ingredients, but whether Mokou's body could withstand the amount necessary to stop the decay of her mind was a dif—_

Abruptly, Mokou's mind filtered back to reality. She glanced at Reisen, who was either unaware or indifferent to the fact that her friend was hallucinating again. Then again, they were heading towards the best place to seek aid for such ailments.

Mokou scrounged her thoughts for any details of the preceding conversation. "Side effects?"

"I'd rather not talk about them." 

"That bad? I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

It was anything but.

They had walked another mile in silence when Mokou realised she was walking alone. She turned back.

Reisen stood still amidst the wild hay. Her eyes were fixed on the tips of her shoes.

Mokou raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay? Is it the leg?"

"No. The leg is nothing. It's just..." Reisen took a deep breath, then shook her head. "It's nothing. Nothing important."

"If you say so." Mokou placed her hands in her pockets and waited. She recognised cracks in a dam when she saw them.

Much like blood from the wound, the truth wound out of Reisen first as a trickle.

"I miss the others." 

"Who?"

"The other rabbits. I used to..." 

Reisen took another deep breath. The trickle turned into a stream. "I was so stupid. I used to think I was somehow better than the others just because I was a moon rabbit. I tried to boss them around and didn't even notice Tewi was calling the real shots until years later." She shook her head. "And then... before long, I really was an earth rabbit like them. Maybe I was one from the moment I set foot on Earth and Master and the princess just didn't tell me. I think I was... happy."

The next moment, she fell to her knees, clutching her head. "And now they're all gone and I'm still here."

"Reisen..." 

Reisen shook her head, refusing to raise her gaze. "I wasn't meant to live this long. It was different on the moon because it wasn't _life_ , not in the same way...but here, where there is life and death we really must die. I must die. Like everyone else. Like all the other rabbits. Like Tewi."

Tewi lived, Mokou knew — she had run into the rabbit mere weeks ago — but she wasn't sure bringing it up would be worth much. Reisen's anguish stemmed from depths beyond mere solitude. Depths Mokou wasn't entirely unfamiliar with. 

She walked over to Reisen and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I know it's painful."

Reisen jerked upwards and grabbed at Mokou's shirt. She failed to get a proper grip and settled for leaning her hand against Mokou's collarbone.

"Painful is trying to understand Master's lectures when she doesn't want you to understand them. This isn't that. This is like something is trying to pull every single cell in my body apart, only they won't _break—_ "

Reisen's voice cracked. Her hand slipped down to her knees. For a long time, she did nothing but sob.

It didn't matter. Mokou knew what she had meant. She knew.

"I'm tired, Mokou." Though her eyes remained downcast, Reisen sounded a little more like herself. "I'm tired of waking up every morning to a world with nothing to do. I'm tired of keeping track of time and taking more medicine every single hour of my life. It doesn't matter if I don't look a day older than when I came to Earth. I _know_ I'm old. And my body knows it. That's why it wants to break apart."

Mokou stayed silent. She couldn't allow herself to give voice to the wild thoughts which threatened to bubble to the surface. Any more than she could acknowledge the truthfulness of Reisen's words.

Instead, she crouched down and met Reisen on the ground. She reached out to touch Reisen's shoulder. When Reisen didn't shy away, she took it as a sign to pull her into a hug.

Reisen's breath hitched. She threw her arms around Mokou with enough force to make Mokou's bones creak. Still with a youkai's strength. Always with a youkai's strength.

A youkai's strength. So prodigious. But ultimately finite.

"I know I promised to serve Master Eirin until the end of time." Reisen's voice was muffled against Mokou's shoulder. But I can't. I can't follow further. I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't..."

Mokou said nothing at first. Instead, she allowed Reisen to rest more of her weight against her shoulder. With her free hand, she reached out to stroke Reisen's hair. Not quite as brittle as her own cobweb. But getting there.

"I understand," she said, quiet and soft, petting Reisen all the while. "Let me help."

Slowly, very slowly, Reisen wound out and relaxed against her. 

"Thank you."

* * *

It was mercy at that point.

Mokou wasn't sure if it felt like mercy, watching Reisen strewn on the bamboo mattress with her head on Eirin's lap. Even if Reisen had chosen the time and place — eventide in Eientei's inner garden — herself. Even if she was smiling.

Beast youkai were not supposed to live for tens of thousands of years, Eirin agreed. Not even lunar rabbits. Let alone lunar rabbits like Reisen who had lost their connection to the Lunar Capital back when Gensokyo still mattered.

Mokou sat down by Reisen's left side and took her hand. In time, Kaguya followed suit on the right.

They could wipe Reisen's recent memories and extend her life a little still, Eirin had continued. Then again, her heart was already pumping more drugs than blood. It was ethically questionable, especially since Reisen herself had chosen otherwise.

Mokou had laughed then, even if she had felt more like weeping. When had Eirin ever considered ethics?

She neither cried nor laughed now. Instead, she stroked Reisen's hand, hoping the gesture was soothing. Reisen's hand was slightly bigger than hers and clammy with cold sweat.

Reisen had always had a choice. She didn't have to keep dousing herself with medicine to stop her body and mind from deteriorating. She didn't have to keep watching the eternal rise and decline. She didn't have to keep walking towards the end of time with Kaguya, Eirin, and Mokou.

She had always had a choice. And now she had made it.

A shiver ran down Mokou's spine. She looked over her shoulder. For a moment, she felt a pair of invisible eyes smiling at her from the roof.

She forgot all about it when Reisen opened her eyes, revealing dimming irises and clouded pupils. "Master. Do you think..."

Reisen paused to gather her breath. The poison Eirin had given her was painless, but Reisen had insisted on a delayed effect. Just in case she changed her mind, presumably. "Master. Do you think I will go to the afterlife here? Or will my spirit travel to the moon?"

Mokou opened her mouth and closed it again. She could have told Reisen her soul would go to the Sanzu just like all other souls on Earth. But Reisen hadn't asked her.

Eirin ran her hand over Reisen's ears, smoothing them against her lap. "Your soul will remain on Earth. You know it as well as I do."

"Good." Reisen closed her eyes again. Her smile returned. "Good."

She said nothing more.

Later that night, as Mokou helped Eirin carry the body across the garden to the furnace, she could have sworn she saw a white rabbit loping into the shadows beneath the full moon.


End file.
